22 September 2006

Following up on the comments I've received so far
about my study, I want to expand on the idea that
public universities could be more proactive in finding
ways to offer applied study to the general student
body. Here are the considerations:
(1) Applied study as a college course is unusually expensive
because of the teacher-to-student ratio (1:1)
(2) Graduate students who aspire to a college teaching
position as applied instructors need to gain relevant
experience and to document it in such a way that it
makes them more employable
Simply opening enrollment in one-on-one lessons as an
elective to the entire student body is not feasible for music departments because of the cost and the need to ensure competency in prospective students. Nonetheless, it seems to me that where there are both students
looking for lessons and instructors who want to teach
them, a solution ought to be possible. The main
obstacle is making it "formal." In other words, the
graduate students could simply offer to teach
non-music majors privately, as they are likely already
doing with high school age and younger kids from the
community, but this would not necessarily make them
more employable in practice: the job descriptions for
the positions they aspire to usually contain some
statement along the lines of "demonstrated success
teaching at the college level," and simply taking on
more private students who happen to be enrolled in
some college or another, while it may indeed be
legitimately valuable to their development as
teachers, will not necessarily be recognized by
potential employers as a valid substitute for acting
as a teaching assistant or adjunct instructor.
What I propose is a hybrid system. Instead of
enrolling each applied student in lessons for
university credit, the teaching assistant would enroll
themselves in a 1-credit independent study course with
an applied faculty member as their advisor. They would
be responsible for recruiting students, scheduling
lessons, and setting rates. Free from the financial
burden of for-credit applied study, the university
could still make two crucial contributions: provide
the teaching assistant space to use for teaching (in
most cases, a medium-sized practice room would be
sufficient), and make the name and contact information
for each prospective instructor available to
interested non-music majors and the community at
large, especially through the course catalog, but also
through whatever central administrative unit within
the department handles enrollment issues.
The teaching assistant's faculty advisor would sit in
on the lessons throughout the semester. The total
amount of such observation would only need to be
commensurate with the number of credits the teaching
assistant is enrolled in; this time, however, need not
be uniformly distributed, meaning that the advisor
could easily work around other commitments. The TA,
for their part, would need to ensure that they have or
can easily recruit enough students to teach for at
least this many hours in a given semester). The
advisor would coach the TA, observe their progress
throughout the semester, and assign a grade; hence,
the TA would not only gain valuable teaching
experience but also have it documented on their
transcript.
The advantages of such a situation over the current
one are numerous. Most importantly, it connects supply
and demand, which benefits both teacher and student.
It also provides the TA with the type of direct
supervision and feedback that music education majors
are required to receive by way of the student teaching
requirement, an equivalent to which does not typically
exist in the case of performance degrees outside of the TA system, but which
could only be highly beneficial to the performance
student. Also, whereas colleges that do allow
non-majors to register for lessons typically do so by
audition only in order to assure a certain level of
competency, the instructor would have the option to
accept raw beginners as well, an experience that,
while perhaps not directly applicable to their future
as instructors at the college level, can only be
beneficial and eye-opening overall. There are
undoubtedly a few students at every school who have
never played an instrument but would like to at least
give it a shot casually, and this would create an
opportunity for them that does not presently exist in
the college environment (piano and guitar are, to my
knowledge, the only notable exceptions).
Finally, much ink and emotion has been spilled over the fact that
music schools (and perhaps colleges in general) do not
prepare students for the harsh realities of the “real
world.” I have, in fact, heard it suggested numerous
times that aspiring performers and composers would be
better off majoring in business than in music. Well,
here is a chance for students to get in touch with
their inner entrepreneur. Although I believe that the
college itself essentially has an obligation to
fulfill by referring interested non-music majors to
prospective instructors, my system is still somewhat
dependent on the ability of the prospective teacher to
recruit students from both inside and outside of the
immediate college environment. This is certainly a
demand that is rarely placed on music students, but
also one which could only strengthen their pedigree as
freelancers.
The primary disadvantage here is that the students
taught by the TA in this scenario do not receive
college credit. It bears mentioning here the
unfortunate fact that given the present cost of
college credits nationwide, studying an instrument
through a college is absurdly expensive in comparison
to going through a private instructor or even a music
store or independent music school. Before my alma
mater switched to a flat-rate credit system, credits
were around $270 each. Weekly hour lessons for a 15
week semester were 4 credits, and we were charged an
additional fee of several hundred dollars per 2
credits of lessons. I estimated at the time that each
lesson was costing nearly $100. Of course, elite
musicians who are in high demand do occasionally
charge this much or more, and many of the instructors
at my school were certainly worthy of being considered
as part of this group. On the other hand, one can get
lessons from a competent independent instructor for
less than half this much (often much less) and I'm
assuming that to the students who would be served by
my proposal (i.e. non-music majors), the decrease in
cost from exorbitant to affordable would far outweigh
any decrease in the quality of instruction from
world-class to merely competent.
Another obstacle I can foresee is the possibility that
there are legal problems with a public institution
presiding over this kind of system, one where the
students are paying the teaching assistant "under the
table." On the other hand, the instructor would not be
an employee of the school but merely registered for a
class. And as mentioned earlier, many graduate
students teach independently anyway; could it possibly
be illegal for the institution to merely acknowledge
that this takes place as long as the income is
reported for tax purposes?
Finally, it bears mentioning that students tend to be
disappointed when turned over to a TA in lieu of a
professor as this is often interpreted (and this is
probably correct most of the time) to mean that they
are viewed as somehow less important. Could this serve
as a deterrent to prospective applied students and
defeat the purpose of implementing such a system? In a
prestigious department, at least, this perception
should be easily overcome after the independent study
program has been in place for a few years as students
will come to realize that they are dealing with
instructors who are themselves prepared to assume a
professorship. I do, however, think that this system
could be implemented quite effectively even where the
TA's are undergraduate upperclassmen. I, for one,
would have jumped at the chance as a senior in college
as I have spent the time immediately following college
acclimating myself to the demands of independent
private teaching (an activity which most of us
performance majors will be taking up at some point
whether we initially plan on it or not).
This is certainly a topic where I could use some
feedback from professors and administrators. Anyone
out there?

Just as TV and movie producers seem to be running low
on ideas these days, it seems like every other new
jazz release is a tribute to someone else. Do we really have nothing
better to do than worship our elders? Are we all just so smitten with dead guys that we just can't go on without paying homage? Or is this just a marketing ploy? When
classical musicians, who have to be at least as
desperate as jazz players when it comes to CD sales,
need to name drop, all they have to do is program the
music of a famous composer. It's not often that one
sees albums with titles like "Tribute to Mozart" or
"Joe Schmoe Pays Homage to the Total Serialists." I
know it's petty, but at the least, I'd rather see more
albums with titles like "Marsalis Plays Monk" or "Joe
Henderson plays the music of Billy Strayhorn" just to
emphasize that we are indeed saluting the music and
not the person, as well as that the modern artist is
actually making a musical contribution to the album
rather than simply trying to ride the coattails of the
masters. In jazz, hero worship is often a symptom of dogma.
Now that the tribute thing is old news, it seems that
artists and promoters feel they have to drop multiple
names in order to get our attention. Directions in
Music was devoted to the music of John Coltrane AND
Miles Davis. Meanwhile, Robin Eubanks pays tribute to
four (count 'em, four) trombonists on a single album,
as if the relative obscurity of the instrument
means that it's foremost exponents are each about a
quarter as marketable as those on more visible
instruments. And I'll vomit if I hear about another
guitar album that makes a pun on "Wes" and "West." I
count myself as a fan of each and every one of the
artists I've mentioned, whether they are giving or
receiving the salute. I myself aspire to record an
entire album of Oliver Nelson tunes; I even penned an
original entitled "Tribute to Oliver Nelson" at the
age of 19. However, I've soured somewhat on this idea because I'm growing weary of all the tributes. Indeed, I've heard the old farts talk as if anything short of dedicating an album
to a given major figure is tantamount to spitting on
their grave. We need to do away with this line of
thinking. After all, dropping names for financial
benefit represents a greater level of disrespect than
does mere ignorance. The gesture is starting to lose its significance. If we’re going to salute, let’s
do it out of genuine reverence for the music of others
and organic musical inspiration from within ourselves.